


Made To Be Broken

by awrinkle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awrinkle/pseuds/awrinkle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Arthur cockblocks himself by way of his own shaky morals, and Yusuf wants to bleach his eyes out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made To Be Broken

Arthur has long since admitted to himself that he is physically attracted to Eames and, after the inception stunt, a little intellectually as well. As frustrating as the hulking Brit is, Arthur knows that given the chance, he would gladly shackle the man to his bed, climb into his lap, and have his wicked way with him until they're both so exhausted they can't even find the strength to roll away from each other when they're spent.

  
But Arthur has his Rules.  
  
Never mind that he's broken nearly all of them, there is one that he respects above all and has thus allowed to remain intact and unmolested:   
  
 _17. I Do Not Sleep With My Coworkers._  
  
It was a sound rule when he made it, watching Mal being lowered into the ground, and it still is. Dreamshare is a brutal business, and relationships within said business are risky at best, deadly at worst. The awkward day after for a one-night stand aside, both participants have open access to a PASIV and a wealth of business secrets at hand in the form of a sleeping person. Arthur's paranoia alone cannot suffer a bedmate. Therefore relationships, brief as they may be, are added stresses that Arthur does not need. After all, Dom and Mal were, as far as Arthur knows (and there is a lot of shit that Arthur knows), the only steady couple in dreamshare. And look where it got them.  
  
Arthur Does Not Sleep With His Coworkers.  
  
But then there's Eames.  
  
Eames, who is grunting with exertion somewhere below Arthur's feet as he slams his fists over and over again into a punching bag.  
  
And Arthur, who is jealous of the punching bag, and wonders if he is so in need of the comfort of human intimacy that he is jealous of an object that is repeatedly beaten to a death that doesn't come, or if Eames has finally gotten under his skin enough that he is steadily losing his mind.   
  
It's one question that Arthur doesn't want to examine too closely.  
  
For now, he is content with tapping away at his keyboard in search of the minutiae of one George Biagianti's life. A man who, according to a weeping mother, is a fan of kidnapping eight year old girls and stuffing them into his meat locker at Biagianti's Deli down the street. It's an unusual job, of course, but the team still has another two months of lying low in the States before Saito can clear up the international unpleasantness that remains from digging into various diplomats' minds the world over. That, and the weeping mother might as well be crying silver dollars the way she was loaded.  
  
So Arthur, and soon Eames, signed on.  
  
Ariadne followed soon after, claiming her classes were finished and that she needed something to do until her spring classes started up. Yusuf appeared at her side muttering about vacations to anyone who asked and dutifully not looking at Ariadne beside him. Arthur, despite his raised eyebrow, said nothing and led them up to the loft.

Loft, is a very loose term for the dominion in which Arthur is forced to exist.  
  
It's an open room above a decrepit gym belonging to one of Eames' mates. It's only patrons are mice and spiders, and even they deign to inhabit the walls and floorboards rather than the cobwebbed dwelling upstairs.  
  
Once Ariadne and Yusuf move in (no one wants to shell out for a hotel no matter how bad the accommodations), they all arm themselves with cleaning supplies and second-hand furniture until the 'loft' actually resembles a loft. They have four beds, full-sized, though they have been shoved together in pairs thanks to a sudden plunge in temperature, a tiny kitchen, a battered couch in front of a 40" flat-screen hauled in because Ariadne can't watch  _Glee_ on a small screen, and a wide array of delicate technology and chemical instruments spread out on six shaky card tables. They are meager and pathetic accommodations for four people who together are worth more than the Hiltons, but laying low is laying low.  
  
Arthur thinks the worst part is the bath.  
  
Because the upstairs floor plan is open, the restroom facilities are comprised of a dingy sink and a chipped claw foot tub with attached shower nozzle both shoved haphazardly in the corner of the room, next to the only window. Arthur had torn the toilet out himself the first day Yusuf had introduced his bean casserole. Window or not, Arthur does not want to deal with that horror again. The team deals with their business across the street at the Chinese Takeout place they frequent. Lyn doesn't care since they order often and tip well, and Arthur gets to brush his teeth with the smell of roast duck in the morning.  
  
But the bath. Oh god, the bath.  
  
It's shining like new thanks to some of Yusuf's questionable cleaning products, but there is honestly nothing that can be done to suitably box it off. Eames had tried stacking milk crates stuffed with newspaper, but once had Arthur stepped inside and gotten into his showering zone, he forgot the loft was shared with three other people. The sound of Yusuf puttering about gave him a minor heart attack, and he whipped out of the tub, into the crates, and straight into Yusuf, gun in hand, before anything could be done to stop him. It took three days of apologizing before Yusuf could look at him again without twitching. Ariadne kept asking where he'd stored the gun. And Eames kept staring at his ass.  
  
Not that that was anything new, of course.  
  
Finally, to assuage the team's need for privacy and Arthur's paranoia, an opaque but see-through curtain was erected around the claw foot tub. The clanging of the pipes was enough to keep Yusuf from coming upstairs when Arthur was showering, and the curtain was just clear enough to assuage Arthur's anxiety when he could discern his person by his blurry image when he did.  
  
Everything was fine. And then Eames decided to start boxing.  
  
Ariadne spent most of her days out looking at buildings and thinking of ways she could manipulate the design into something almost unrecognizable and Yusuf tagged along, because, yeah,  _vacation_. Eames, however, boxed.  
  
While his job as the forger was foremost for this particular job, Eames had gone under in five minute intervals for two days before waking up and saying, "So what now?" Arthur, frowning, had gone under with him and studied his forge of eight year old Amanda Ellen and found it competent and a bit eerie in its authenticity.  
  
"I still have research to do and Ariadne's working on the layer. Just.  _Do_  something."  
  
Eames had snorted, stripped off his shirt, and jogged downstairs. Arthur was still sitting on the couch, cannula in hand, thinking ( _oh godskinhard lick tattoos_ ), when the pounding started. His body actually jerked as he heard the first of the blows raining down, and he found himself panting like he'd run a mile as he wound up the cannula and set aside the PASIV. He laid down on his bed, ripped open his trousers, and came all over his hands with barely a pump, his lip caught between his teeth as he fought for silence.  
  
Afterward, he'd nuzzled his face in Eames' pillow on the bed beside him for a moment, just a moment, while the post-orgasmic haze cleared. When Eames had tromped back upstairs an hour later panting and sweaty, Arthur was back at his laptop, smooth and unruffled and tapping delicately at the black keys.  
   
He most certainly didn't jolt when the shower started. Nor when it finished. Not even when Eames stepped out, sighing contentedly behind him as he'd toweled himself dry. No no, not at all.

 

 

"Ariadne, how's the shop looking?"  
  
She's sitting forward on the couch, tapping the edge of a blueprint with her pencil.  
  
"M'okay. I just have no idea what the inside of his meat locker looks like."  
  
Arthur pauses while typing, looks over his screen, "Are you kidding me? I thought you'd been scoping the shop all week."  
  
Ariadne turns red, and her gaze darts toward Yusuf for a moment, who is frozen, clutching a beaker and staring into it like it holds the secret to the meaning of life.  
  
"I, uh, I mean I've  _seen_  it--"  
  
"Just. Go."  
  
Ariadne scrambles up from the couch, grabs her purse, grabs Yusuf, and makes a run for it. Arthur watches them go, a vein twitching in his temple. Eames chuckles from his sprawl across their beds and Arthur mentally damns him. Sometimes, his pillow smells like Eames and he finds himself hard but unable to relieve himself in the middle of the night. Eames doesn't make things easier, murmuring quietly in his sleep and draping his arm over Arthur's body like it's easy, like it's something they  _do_.  
  
"Don't you have  _something_ you can do?" Arthur regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth, because Eames is stripping to his boxers in the next moment, all the while fixing Arthur with a cool stare, his mouth upturned in a way that screams  _I know I know_.  
  
Eames hums as he passes Arthur's desk. "Tut tut, Arthur: always so tense. You really should relax a little."  
  
Arthur's eye twitches and he stares fixedly at his screen as he types  _fuck fuck fuck_  over and over again. "Go hit something, Mr. Eames," he says coolly. Eames chuckles and heads downstairs.  
   
"Oh, I intend to."  
  
A shiver travels up Arthur's spine, as soft as a fingertip and equally as unnerving.

 

 

Arthur listens as Eames slams his fists into the punching bag, his blood thrumming as he imagines the sounds he could punch out of Arthur as he arches in ecstasy underneath him.

 

 

When Eames returns, Arthur's still at his laptop like he never left it, though Eames can see a few hairs out of place that Arthur didn't quite manage to smooth back into place in his haste. The pillow Eames smoothes every morning has a slight dent in it, and the bedspread is trailing on the ground, a few inches lower than he left it. Eames smirks and heads for the shower, dropping his boxers in his wake and listening as Arthur's breath hitches and his fingertips falter just a moment above his keyboard.

 

 

Arthur always knew that Eames would be the death of him.  
  
It happens in the middle of the night, while Yusuf and Ariadne snored heavily on the other side of the room, their joined beds moved as far from Arthur as humanly possible.  
  
At precisely 2:12, Eames rolls over and drapes his arm over Arthur's waist, his thumb resting snugly in the crease of where Arthur's leg meets his hip. Arthur stiffens but doesn't move, used to this after  twelve nights of having his personal space bodily violated by Eames and his bad sleeping habits. He relaxes muscle by muscle until he's falling back to sleep with the weight of Eames' arm hemming him in.  
  
At 2:29, Eames' hand flexes and Arthur's eyes snap open, catapulted into consciousness  like he never left it. He's suddenly, achingly hard and Eames' fingers are a hair's breadth away from the tent in his pajama pants. Arthur pokes him in the chest, but Eames simply buries his face in Arthur's neck and rumbles something about snapdragons before quieting and snoring lightly into the hollow of the pointman's throat.  
  
Arthur is caught between wanting to shoot the cuddly bastard and wanting to fuck him into the bed. He settles for staring into the waterstained plaster of the ceiling and ignoring his unbearably hard dick.  
  
He's still awake at four when Yusuf wakes to check on his various test tubes and beakers, and at 5:30 when Ariadne wakes up and the pair skips downstairs--possibly to fornicate elsewhere.   
  
At 6:20, Eames' phone alarm goes off--Axel F, of course--and Eames stretches, his hand sliding up Arthur's thigh as he groans and in essence rubs his dickagainst Arthur's ass. Arthur doesn't bother holding back the groan when Eames presses his mouth, warm and wet, against the shell of his ear and whispers in a voice hoarse with sleep, "Sleep well, darling?"  
  
Fuck it.  
  
Some rules are made to be broken.

 

 

Arthur wakes up six hours later, still intimately twined with Eames and covered in various bodily fluids as Yusuf screams and runs downstairs, clawing at his eyes and damning Arthur's existence. Ariadne stammers, frozen at the foot of their bed and staring at their tangled legs. Arthur rolls over and buries his face in Eames' chest, sighing when his arms automatically surround him and drifting back to sleep.

 

 

end


End file.
